Well, I'm happy to report limited success, at least, with my friend's setup. We had too abandon trying to get a signal on SatMex 5 (our true south bird), and focused on getting in Echo 7 at 119. We got a that in about 2 minutes, stored it and went to 123 using USALS. We got pretty good levels on there, locked it in, and got the hell off the roof. It was 110 today and we were up there for almost an hour. We cooled off watching the Mets game on WNGS on 123, then started to get the other birds in. Everything was fine until we got to 97. The levels were really low ( in the 30's). Most of the TP's were zero. I used to step control and got some TP's to go up to around 50, while most of the ones that were zero were now in the teen's. I concluded that we'll probably need to tweak the elevation setting a little. Nothing east of 97 was getting any signal at all. Hopefully, tweaking the elevation will solve this problem. The pole is completely level and is not flexing when the dish moves. I triple checked it with a johnson level so it must be the elevation setting. We'll try again next week.
Two things--I still don't know how to set a reference point with this receiver. I guess it doesn't matter at this point. Also, in the satellite list, there is no mention of Galaxy 27 at 129, only Echostar 5. How will I be able to bring in G27 if it's not listed? Other than this, everything should be running fine after next week.